A truly amazing genre-breaking work of art unlike any that has ever been or ever will. I was captivated from the moment I opened the cover until the extremely suspenseful moment I turned the last page. With that said, I was a little disappointed that 71602 was knocked off by 92937 just as the plot was unfolding, but the arrival of 96240 really got my blood pumping and I just couldn't put the book down from that moment on.

I am so glad that Amazon.com is offering the "Search Inside This Book" option for this book so that it can be enjoyed by countless other avid readers who otherwise may not have come across it. I wait, impatiently, for the audio CD version of this fine book.

Tuesday, April 26, 2005

All the PC are complaining that the Catholics are killing people in Africa by opposing condom distribution...

My opinion is that these things deteriorate quickly, and since prostitutes aren't worrying about committing sin in prostitution, why should they worry about using a condom? Answer: They are very poor and customers object.

However, perhaps we should read about Asia, where you can't blame these things on catholics.HERE...massive condom shortage in Asia.

Since it's hard to biopsy brains of live people, and since brains in dead people deteriorate very very quickly, I'm not sure why this is supposed to be a better idea than using umbillical cord cells, or fat cells, etc.

However, one paragraph caught my eye...

Scientists have already been looking at using stem cells taken from embryos to treat diabetes.

These are primitive "master" cells that can be programmed to become many kinds of tissue.

However, there have been concerns that these cells can turn cancerous, are difficult to work with in the laboratory and raise ethical dilemmas.

Oh, you mean you didn't know stem cells from embryos can turn cancerous? Yup. a major problem. and another problem is overgrowth. I first ran across this last week in Science News (no link) where they noted that if you grow stem cells too long in a lab they turn cancerous, and that this was also a problem with adult stem cells...(usually there are more adult stem cells to start out with, so they don't have to grow as long, so there is less cancer).

So next time you read about all those wonderful cures from embryonic stem cells, remember...they not only don't mention all the actual cures from adult stem cells but this little problem with cancer.

Friday, April 22, 2005

Scott Ott's take on the NYTimes/Katie Couric/Matthew Fox/Maureen Dowd complaints about the new pope...

R.C. Lite will elect its own leader to the largely ceremonial post of New-World Pope. Thorny moral questions in the new religious sect will be decided by Internet polling, the results of which will provide non-binding guidance to church members......."We need a pope with nuanced ideas," said one unnamed U.S. Bishop. "He needs to be a uniter, not a divider. He can't be afraid to change his deeply-held convictions in light of shifting public opinion. He must be courageous enough to keep his beliefs separate from his behavior and decision making."

A woman has given birth as part of an exhibition in a German art gallery in front of dozens of spectators.

Ramune Gele, 27, gave birth to her first child, a healthy baby girl named Audra, in the DNA art gallery in the capital Berlin.

The father, 29-year-old musician Winfried Witt, who said before the birth "it's a gift to humanity, a once in a lifetime thing", called the experience "an existential work of art".

Johann Novak, manager of the gallery, said the couple wanted to challenge conventional norms.

"It's a bit of test to see if society can cope," he said.

Yup....who cares if he is risking the life of his wife and the baby. What if the baby didn't breathe, or the mom had a post partum hemorrhage? Who cares about safety, this is art we're talking about....not...

And do you want to bet that the artist didn't clean up afterward?

Artists are into "Existential works of art"...they aren't into cleaning up messes....

Thursday, April 21, 2005

The government has a new food pyramid. A poll said that although 70 percent of people recognized the food pyramid, hardly anyone followed it...(note: I truly doubt that 70 percent of people actually recognized the pyramid...but then I doubt 70 percent of people know who George Bush is...)

The goal of the pyramid program was to condense the 70-page Dietary Guidelines into a graphic that would be useful to the public

Yup. One truly doubts that anyone would read seventy pages of guidelines. However, one wonders if people will have time or energy to figure this out either...

Inhaled insulin hopefully, in the near future, people will be able to inhale insulin rather than inject it.I know grown men who hesitate to use insulin because they are afraid of injecting themselves...usually they adjust, but many people put up with poor sugar control rather than to start insulin injections. So this will be valuable.But you'll still have to prick your finger or arm to measure blood sugar.

Well, the CardinalRatzingerFanClub is ecstatic, and Maureen Dowd, Andrew Sullivan, Cokie Roberts and the NYTimes are having hissy fits...You know the press is very anti Catholic and showing it's liberal bias when the JERUSALEM POST has to defend the Pope...But good old Lileks says it best:The selection of Ratzinger was initially heartening, simply because he made the right people apoplectic. I’m still astonished that some can see a conservative elevated to the papacy and think: a man of tradition? As Pope? How could this be? As if there this was some golden moment that would usher in the age of married priests who shuttle between blessing third-trimester abortions and giving last rites to someone who’s about to have the chemical pillow put over his face. At the risk of sounding sacreligious: it’s the Catholic Church, for Christ’s sake! You’re not going to get someone who wants to strip off all the Baroque ornamentation of St. Peter’s and replace them with IKEA wine racks, okay?

I have my doctrinal differences with the Catholic church as well; I understand the reasons for requiring priestly celibacy, but I don’t agree with them. I don’t agree with many Catholic positions on issues regarding sexuality. Growing up Lutheran, I was gently guided away from the clanging errancy of Maryolatry. Because I disagree with the Catholic Church on these and a few other matters, I am– how do I put this? – NOT CATHOLIC....To those who want profound change, consider an outsider’s perspective: the Catholic Church is the National Review of religion. You may live long enough to see it become the Weekly Standard. In your dreams it might become the New Republic. But it’s never going to be the Nation. And if ever it does, it will have roughly the same subscriber base.

Yes, yes, easy for me to say, it’s not my church. New age of oppression and intolerance, and all that. Write me when hot-eyed Jesuits walk into a mosque in Qom with ten pounds of Cemtex strapped to their chest.

VH1 Classic presents a first-ever television special event that is sure to have you shouting Shalom! "MATZO AND METAL: A VERY CLASSIC PASSOVER" invites viewers -- Jews and Gentiles alike -- to the network's own version of a rock-n-roll Passover Seder attended by heavy metal and hard rock artists who happen to be Jewish.

Process ingredients in a blender individually in order listed until you reach the dried peppers and place in a non-reactive container. Place Smoked Habsand Choptles in blender and drain juice from mixture in bowl into the blender and process. Add to the mixture in the bowl. Add cumin and stir well.Drizzle Balsamic vinegar over the top. Let marinate overnight

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Serving Ideas : Best served warm the day after.

NOTES : Made whie cleaning out the refridgerator....... thus the name... a litltle of this, a little of that, a little more of that,a _lot_ of that....

Despite the boomers' zealous attempts to stop time - with fitness and anti-aging products, with cosmetic enhancements by needle, laser and knife - time has caught up.

The deaths of iconic figures and the noisy debate over assisted suicide have brought boomers face to face with their nemesis. "Suddenly," The New Republic observed, "we are all speculating about the feeding tubes in our future." Boomers want to control mortality so they're looking at living wills, and legal and medical options.

I've visited the future, and it isn't pretty.

Ah, but that's the problem with assuming you are in charge of your own life, and that pleasure, selfishness, and self esteem is the aim of life.. . Sick? See a doctor. Pregnant? Have an abortion. Tired of an old spouse? No fault divorce...eventually you face death...which is why assisted suicide is such a nice idea: You can even be in charge of death...

One of the lessons that John Paul II gave to us in his long dying is that even in the fragility of illness, ones life is valuable. God does not look at the beauty of our face, nor to our wealth, nor to our ability to have a pleasent life under our own control.

The Objibwe saw the elderly as honored, holding the wisdom of the circle of life. And those who were senile, weak, or even confused, were not "non persons" to be starved but people who were partly on the other side and could intercede for the rest of us.

Philippinos have a similar idea about the elderly and You follow God's will in this matter...which is one reason I am in the Philippines with my husband, whose health is good but frail: so that we will not have the desperate depersonalization of health care in "modern" hospitals, but where we also will be cared for in our old age.

Poor Maureen, she doesn't know that all things work for the best for those who love God and follow HIS purpose...

When 35 Greenpeace protesters stormed the International Petroleum Exchange yesterday, they had planned the operation in great detail.

What they were not prepared for was the post-prandial aggression of oil traders who kicked and punched them back on to the pavement.

“We bit off more than we could chew. They were just Cockney barrow boy spivs. Total thugs,” one protester said, rubbing his bruised skull. “I’ve never seen anyone less amenable to listening to our point of view.”

Another said: “I took on a Texan Swat team at Esso last year and they were angels compared with this lot.” Behind him, on the balcony of the pub opposite the IPE, a bleary-eyed trader, pint in hand, yelled: “S** off, Swampy.”

Monday, April 11, 2005

See previous story.Actually, we don't feed terminal cancer patients, and once I stopped IV on a lady with azotemia, angina, and liver failure...although we did feed her by mouth...But I want to tell a story of a lady with a stroke.This lady, an elderly Lakota woman, was treated for pneumonia and during her hospitalization developed a stroke and some dementia.One of the treatments for dementia is to orient the patient---but she had regressed and could not understand English. So they sent her back to Pine Ridge Indian Hospital, so that she would have caretakers who spoke her own language...Now, she arrived late Friday afternoon, when I was going off duty from moonlighting on dayshift in the Emergency room. My replacement for the weekend was a resident from Baltimore, from a big shot hospital.

After doing her history and physical, I called the Medical doctor on call, and asked if we needed anything else. He came down and saw her, and decided since she was paralyzed on one side and having trouble swallowing, we should put in a temporary feeding tube through her nose.... (usually this clears up in a couple weeks after a stroke). However, the X Ray tech had the x ray machine taken apart to clean before the "friday night" crowds came in, and we were not able to feed her until an x ray confirmed the tube was in her stomach and not her lung.

He was going out and was within 20 minutes if there were problems, and I was going off duty, so he asked the replacement doctor to check the x ray when it was done, to save him an extra trip and so they could start giving her nutrition that evening.

Then the visiting doctors said quietly: "But why feed her?"

I was ready to say something sarcastic when I overheard this, (indeed, I was trying to remember the name of the AIM aka American Indian Movement member who lived next to my room)...but I did not have to intervene. The medical doctor merely said quiety: We don't do things like that here...

And left the room...and told the nurses not to feed her until he came back that evening to check the xray for tube placement.

Needless to say, that doctor was not permitted to come back to Pine Ridge...

But my question is this:

How many poor black patients were "not treated" in Baltimore? And did their families know that they were being starved as useless eaters?

Families of fellow patients at the hospital claimed that some staff had become so upset at seeing elderly people being starved that they had taken it upon themselves to feed them secretly.

One relative has described how it was distressing to see his father go without food. Andrew Hughson said his 75- year-old father, also called Andrew, would vainly stretch his hand towards meals being delivered to other patients.

“We kept being told that feeding him would be bad for his general health, and he was too frail to tell us otherwise,” he said.

Sunday, April 10, 2005

This blog is discussing how Yale Law school is planning to rewrite our constitution, with funding from George Soros...

Some of the comments could be conservative or "progressive", depending on how you define freedom etc...

However, I am always leery when I read things like this:

Meantime, developments in biology, genetics, and medical treatment ensure that the next 15 years will be ones pushing the boundaries of reproduction, life, and death. This seems a time for caution in what we install as constitutional rules about each of these vital matters while permitting individuals and localities to experiment with the new possibilities.

actually, there is nothing new under the sun..."new possibilities"? Translation: Eugenics, abortion, infanticide, euthanasia...in all it's various forms. Such as what we see in the Netherlands...and which are being touted as "rights" in this country...

John Paul II, in Evangelium vitae, saw all these things. When I read it, I found he was even more paranoid than I was at what was being planned in bioethics seminars and in PC universities --ideas which have little public support but are being imposed by the courts...

However, the suggestion that these things are "new" is wrong. Plato wrote about them, complaining that doctors allowed sick people with poor quality of life to survive instead of encouraging them to end their lives...and in the Republic, eugenic breeding was popular, and of course infanticide of imperfect children was common...

Of course, as the saying goes: Watch what you wish for... you might get it...

Just imagine if a conservative such as Tom Delay gets to write the new constitution...

Democrats block nomination of man who opposes selling the morning after pill over the counter...they are claiming he is doing it for political reasons.

Actually, from my experience, I've seen too many cases where it made women too nauseous to take it...and had moms complain their teenaged daughters didn't take the pill for days after it was prescribed.

Finally, by telling women they have a "second option", it encourages unsafe sex...or the idea that they don't have to worry...but of course in REAL life, these same women are the same self destructive types who 1) won't use a condom to protect themselves from STD 2) are too disorganized to go the drug store for several days 3) won't take the second third or fourth doses because of side effects 4) will claim they "had to" abort their pregnancy because the morning after pill caused fetal malformations and 5) will then become depressed and become druggies, if they already aren't druggies.

In non self destructive women, it is possible that it will prevent some pregnancies: But the statistics are NOT 100 percent, if I remember correctly only 50 percent lower, so the end result will be more abortions...since the rate of "unprotected" sex will increase...

and the side effects of nausea are common...but what about increase coagulability (phlebitis and pulmonary emboli), increased vaginal bleeding, harming a pregnancy that was conceived weeks before the pill was taken, etc. etc...LINK

"Now, if you want to talk about disgusting Mexican food, this guy should look into some of the other pre-Columbian food that is still popular in south & southcentral Mexico, the stuff involving various grubs & insects..."

There is a lot on TV about the plans for a large state funeral of the pope...

Funerals are not for the dead, but for the living. It is a way for us to express our sorrows that we are bereft of the dead one, and a way to honor their life.

This is why it is telling that Mr. Schiavo has cremated his wife...I don't blame him for seeking a secret funeral, but why cremation? She was Catholic, after all, and Catholics don't usually cremate their dead.

Yes, I know...as Mark Steyn remarked, when the topic is brought up, the majority of Americans merely stick their fingers in their ears and say:" La, la, la...I can't hear you".

But, hold on, this is not about Terri.

This is about Charlie.

Years ago, I worked at an institution for the retarded.

One of our clients was a quiet boy in his twenties who wore a hockey helmet because he had severe seizures. Aside from this, he was "normal" looking, and from his history we suspected that his brain damage was probably due to trauma...aka child abuse...and traumatic seizures are notoriously hard to control

No matter what we did, his seizures continued.So the Neurologist admitted him to the hospital.Two days later, we heard one of our patients died...we were expecting a death of one client with pneumonia, but no, it was Charlie. He had a seizure and died, despite all they could do.

When we went to bury Charlie, we found he had no funeral fund. His social security checks went to his parents, not the institution...most parents used the money to buy "Goodies" and presents...alas, Charlies parents just used it.

When we contacted them for funeral instrutions, we found them both drying out at the same rehab center...and they were penniless...

So the administration decided to creamate Charley and give his ashes to his parents.It was the cheapest way to "bury" him, and that was that.

This horrified our old fashioned staff...and I heard many comments saying the parents first threw Charley away, then they wasted his money, and now they are throwing away his ashes.

I had a discussion about this with our social worker, who was trying to find a funeral director to give him a "free" funeral, and someone to donate a burial plot.

"Oh, it's too bad the monsignor isn't here any more", she commented, "He always helped us in the past".

"The Monsignor? Which Monsignor"? I asked horrified. The only local monsignor had disappeared after settling a lawsuit for molesting altar boys...

"Yes, that one". She laughed.

"I'm not a Catholic, but whenever we had to bury someone and needed help, I always called him. He wasn't a good priest morally, but he did care about our clients, and when we had a burial to do, he would donate a plot and help fund the funeral ".

This story always reminds me of the Hassadic story of the rich mean miser who once gave a poor lady an onion because he felt pity for her...and when he died, his sins were put on one side of the scale, and the onion the other....

Eventually we found a plot and a funeral director for a real funeral.

So Charlie was buried, the parents were released from the drunk tank to attend, and the staff who was Charlie's real family had a decent funeral to mourn the passing of a nice guy who they loved.

It wasn't much for a life destroyed by cruelty and lived in obscurity, but at least in death he wasn't merely thrown away by a cheap bureaucrat who didn't care.

and the Beeb? They not only report it with a straight face, but they put the complaints of voter fraud by opposition in quotes...I mean, just because dead people voted doesn't mean it was a fraudulent election: They do that in Chicago all the time. However, threatening to withhold food from areas that voted wrong does sort of mean that maybe some people weren't too eager to starve...

A very depressing story and probably a million will starve or die of famine related disease without a single demonstration from the Catholic left or Move on...Mark Steyn recycles an old column on this that will make you laugh at a bad situation...it seems the commonwealth sent Mugabe a letter saying that if he didn't change his ways they'd be werry werry angwy...

Read the last paragraph...I can't link because the children might read it...

In the face of the negative news, locals in 1979 proposed to build the white statue on a ledge blasted out of the Continental Divide, 8,510 feet above sea level. The statue, with upturned hands, overlooks the junction of Interstates 90 and 15, and was dedicated to all women, especially mothers.

Volunteers carved a road six miles to the top of East Ridge, sometimes making only 10 feet of progress a day. Many reveled in the tough job.

"It was an expression of everything they had done in their lives," Mihelich said.

International polls have noted that Filippinos are the happiest people in the world....They are also the second most corrupt country in the world (the first place was given to nearby Indonesia).So today's Manila Bulletin has this joke:

Friday, April 01, 2005

Most people know about the murders in the Red Lake High School...which now seem to be a copy cat inspired from Columbine.`

But there is another Red Lake story that few remember...

Back in the 1950's there was an epidemic of strep impetigo and cases of scarlet fever that resulted in quite a few cases of glomerulonephritis...This was recognized as a problem in 1953 and written up in the literature, in Minnesota Medicine 1954 by Dr. Kleinman.

Native Americans often develop an itchy rash due to sunlight, and impetigo is a common complication , but not all strep strains cause kidney damage. The virulent bacteria was dubbed the "red lake" strain.

Essentially the epidemic was wiped out by culturing and treating everyone with strep.

Ah, but ten years later, there was another study...where people were observed and cultured, but only treated if they sought help. Since most people didn't bother to go to hospital and sit for three hours to get a minor sore throat or skin infection treated, a lot of the infections didn't get treated...and as a result, guess what?

A lot of people got glomerulonephritis.

And by the time the 1965 study was done, it was widely known that untreated strep infections could cause nephritis...

This in some ways is like the Tuskegee study, done to confirm what would happen if you didn't treat infection...and without those in the experiment really understanding what was going on...

To this day, the local Indians remember they were used as "guinea pigs"...

Contradicting a previous UN report that said the pre war level of malnutrition in Iraqi children was 25%...

Thanks to Captainsquarter blog for finding that link.

The old UN report also states:

However, the Oil for Food Programme (OFFP), passed by the Security Council in late 1996, did help to reduce the impact of sanctions on the population by allowing the Iraqi government to sell oil and use the revenue to purchase humanitarian supplies.

This article says it all. The Schiavo case is NOT about withdrawing care that prolongs dying (something that as a doctor and as a Catholic I have advised families to do many times), despite the "spin" on many TV discussions. It is about the ability to see severely disabled people as our brothers.

At what point would those who determined that Terri Schiavo's life was not worth living be confident in ruling that my daughter's life -- limited as it is to those few, inconsistently performed acts of awareness -- was also not worth living?

This is the question underlying the growing unease with which many disabled people and their loved ones have viewed the Schiavo story, especially since her feeding tube was removed two weeks ago.

How can anyone know what constitutes another being's life-worthiness?

Ah, didn't you know? Bioethicists have devised all sorts of mathematical formulas for both "Quality of life" and for "criteria of personhood"...

He estimated that the amount of biological particles in the air, worldwide, annually is 1,000 teragrams. A teragram is somewhat more than a million tons.

By comparison, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, established by the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environmental Program, estimated biological particles at 56 teragrams, compared with 3,300 teragrams of sea salt and 2,000 teragrams of mineral dust.

The new finding means researchers should take biological materials seriously in climate modeling, in cloud physics and in hygienic questions such as allergies, Jaenicke said.

"Don't regard that as a minor contribution," he said.

The implications for the global climate are unclear, said Murray V. Johnston, a chemistry professor at the University of Delaware.

So dandruff causes global warming...I wonder if the Kyoto treaty insists that we all use Head and Shoulders?

There's an address that balding European leaders are after. Italy's Premier Silvio Berlusconi, proud of his new hair implants, said that his European counterparts "are seriously interested by this operation and that this address is becoming an international success."